Polanski's Los Angeles in the thirties is a parched landscape of corruption just waiting to be washed clean by a flash flood down the non-existent L.A. River. He borrows "Chinatown" less for a setting than for a state of mind, flashing his poetic license. Jack Nicholson is the private eye whose sleepy gaze unravels layers of private depravity behind a public waterworks scam involving gentleman-farmer John Huston and his skittish daughter Faye Dunaway. If Nicholson's J. J. Gittes is the Son of Sam (Spade) or even Philip (Marlowe), Dunaway's Mrs. Mulwray and her dad more likely crawled out of James M. Cain's moral gutter. We even sense Nathanael West's angel looking over Polanski's shoulder. Ah, yes, L.A. of old, with its underground arteries of greed and lust. (Forget it, Jake. It's Blade Runner.)